Guerilla Gardening: Resilience in Bloom

By Niamh Nugent | 

As spring brings new life to Earth, guerrilla gardening transforms neglected urban spaces into community-driven farms, helping to address inequalities in food access. Referring to the lack of legal authorization to garden in a given space, “guerrilla gardening" fulfills an abandoned space’s potential to grow food or flowers, providing social liberation through community-based action. 

In the 1960s, counterculture activists in Berkeley, California created People’s Park & garden in protest of UC Berkeley’s purchase of occupied land, displacing rightful inhabitants. From there, guerilla gardening began occupying urban spaces nationwide as a political protest to food aparthieds and racial discrimination within the United States. 

A food apartheid is an area typically marked by a higher density of convenience stores and fast-food restaurants, making it harder for citizens to obtain nourishing food. Much of Chicago’s South Side is deemed as experiencing food apartheid due to historical redlining, subjecting inhabitants to limited resources, products, foods and services. As redlining is a discriminatory practice disproportionately impacting Black and Brown neighborhoods, the issue of access is ultimately a racial one. Communities affected by redlining experience increased health effects because of proximity to industrial pollution and limited resources to quality products, services and food.

In aims of addressing the issue of access, Chicago’s Native Youth and other restoration movements work around the city to provide relief. In Albany Park, Chicago, Jaine Pochel leads members of the Chi-Nation Youth (CNYC) in growing the First Nations Garden (Wiinso, Wiikonge Otishinikaaso) in a previously evacuated 15,625 square foot lot. Working with the global Land Back Movement, this cooperative approach works to reclaim lost lands to Indigenous people as Albany Park occupies the traditional territories of the Council of the Three Fires: the Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi. Since 2019, the garden has evolved from a neglected urban space into a thriving hub for food, community, and educational opportunities that uplift the community.

Quality food access and education are vital for all communities and individuals to thrive. Closer to Loyola University Chicago’s campus, Rogers Park and Edgewater feature opportunities to learn and engage in community-based action through local gardens. Edgewater Beach Community Garden and Vedgewater Community Garden work closely with the Edgewater Environmental Coalition as a grassroots initiatives to provide residents with space to grow crops. Similarly, individuals from Ruby Garden, Dubkin Park Community Garden, Hello! Howard Garden, and Howard Area Community Garden in Rogers Park work in tandem to promote environmentally sustainable practices through education, outreach and policy proposals. 

To alleviate systemic oppression behind food inequality, individuals can support policy reform by voting in local elections and voicing support for food equity. Additionally, buying from locally owned grocery stores and farmers' markets supports underrepresented farmers and the local economy.

Ecological resistance, like guerilla gardening, offers a peaceful form of protest, providing communal spaces for where food, community, and ideas can take root and thrive. As spring approaches, consider nourishing your mind and body by volunteering at a community garden or learning how to grow your own food. 

Nourishment is a fundamental right shared by all living things; denying access to quality food is a denial of basic humanity. To move forward, we must recognize these injustices, commit to addressing them and cultivate solutions so our communities may bloom. 

Positionality Statement

I, Niamh Nugent, am a 19-year-old white woman from Naperville, IL. majoring in environmental studies with minors in marketing and sociology while studying the pre-law track at the Loyola University of Chicago. I acknowledge the privilege that comes with higher education and want to use my resources to help others. My experiences are limited and, therefore, I understand my perspective may be as well. I believe that, like nature, people thrive in biodiversity, and we must create stronger, equitable and sustainable systems for all individuals to flourish.